


to guard you in all your ways

by hallowgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s12ep01 Keep Calm And Carry On, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mary Ships It, Mary Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, POV Mary Winchester, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), bittersweet fluff, everyone can see it, mixtapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-03 19:46:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallowgirl/pseuds/hallowgirl
Summary: She stands in the nursery in another life, and watches her son, and feels that jolt, a silent sonic boom cracking under their feet, power and tenderness nothing compared to the awe of the sheer love that will in the same moment rip Heaven open with a wrench of its' hands and touch her son's head with the tenderest kiss.Mary watches Dean greet Castiel.





	to guard you in all your ways

**Author's Note:**

> So, after a couple of years of seeming to write solely Political RPF fic, I'm sliding back into other fandoms too, and having recently caught up with the emotional deluge that is SPN, I'm still sinking down with the Destiel ship.  
I actually wrote this after making [this gifset](https://hallowgirl.tumblr.com/post/187016426319/angels-are-watching-over-you-ill-watch-over-you) which was inspired by [this Destiel video](https://freckledwings.tumblr.com/post/166184758207/the-road-so-far-cover-by-my-brother), which was made by [freckledwings](https://freckledwings.tumblr.com/)  
which you all need to go and check out immediately because it reminds you all over again why we ship it.  
Coda (sort of) to s12ep01: Keep Calm And Carry On. Title is from an interpretation of one of the Biblical quotes about angels: "He shall give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways."  
If you want to chat about my fics, you can send me an ask or message at my [Tumblr](https://hallowgirl.tumblr.com/) .  
Comments are fuel so leave one if you like it.:)

_She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us._

_Angels are watching over you._

_I'll watch over you._

* * *

She still sees the babies in them, even as men, taller and stronger than her. Sammy, a tiny, bonny squirming little thing, nestled against her breast, the faintest gleam of fair hair coating his baby head. And Dean, her wriggling, chubby-cheeked, dimple-grinned, mischief-eyed baby, his arms always quick to wrap around her, a hug flung tight round her in his eager childish love.

She sees the way his eyes widen as he moves to the man in a trenchcoat, staring down the barrel of her gun, the way his breath stutters and settles into place the moment he catches sight of him, reassures himself, that yes, it's him, and then his arms fly around him, pulling him tight into his chest, and his eyes close for a moment, almost disbelievingly, and it could be thirty years ago again, John's eyes closing against her cheek as he folded her into his coat, relief and warmth and touch jumbling together in that frantic, fumbled embrace, pressing their poundings hearts together.

Even if she hadn't heard her son's name, in a way so familiar it ached in her chest, shouted out to stop itself gasping into a sob-_"Dean!"_-she would have known from that moment of snatched, fierce closeness, their hands pressing into each other's backs, as though they were just trying to climb into each other.

Even with everything her family knew, Mary never thought angels were real-not truly, buried deep down inside her. But she thought there must be something out there, something good, because otherwise, with so much she'd seen that was evil, there had to be something as strong, some reason for her and John and the boys, and the fierce well of love that dragged her deeper each time she lay against John's shoulder, Dean asleep on his lap, Sammy nestled against her shoulder. There had to be something just as good, just as strong. John would have said it was them, what they had, together.

Mary believed that, but it still felt like an extra touch to put out an angel statue next to her boys' beds, to whisper a prayer to something she wasn't sure she believed in, but that felt right in her mouth anyway, to murmur to them as she touched their silky-smooth cheeks, their hair whispers between her fingers, because she couldn't think it wasn't true, _"Angels are watching over you."_

* * *

"He's an angel."

"I'm an angel."

The way they speak at once, both of them turning only slightly to face her, their eyes roaming back to each other almost immediately, searching each other for something, would have been enough.

"Come again?" she says, almost weakly, not because she's scared or wants to pull their gazes away from each other, because there's an aching swell in her chest at the sight of her son's eyes taking in this other creature-this angel, the angel-as though he's learning something by heart that he's already known a thousand times, and the sight leaves her soft with love for him, for that look in his eyes she never got to see dawn for the first time.

And when she looks at his angel, standing next to him, eyes bluer than eyes have any right to be and fierce, his body tensed, ready to-and Mary knows this in her _gut_-ready to throw himself in front of her son in a heartbeat-in the storm of something electric and powerful and _other_, like the edge of a storm, that hits her at the edges, she feels something else too-something just as fierce, just as powerful, but warmer, pulling her in, loving with a furious strength-and then she hears her own whisper, as she looked at her son, asleep in his cot, hand curled against his cheek, the sleep of someone sure he was safe.

And then she'll see in her memory, as she never saw before, the room around them arch and stretch under the strength of something Mary might once have believed was merely her own love, her son's hair stirring at his neck, the whole room taking a silent breath.

_Angels are watching over you._

* * *

In that moment, as she looks from his angel to Dean, she sees again that moment she'll cling onto for as long as she's here, that moment that sends her heart squeezing softly with maternal pride, warm and strong enough to wrap around her son twice over-that hug, that pulling his angel into his chest, the gentle roll of his eyes even as a small smile pulls at his mouth that he can't hide, the murmur of his voice_-"OK. All right"-_so that if Mary closed her eyes, he could have been his father.

And then his angel's voice again, her son's name held in it for a second time, more carefully now, as if it might break, with the ragged edge of a sob-_"Dean."_

And for a moment, she's a girl again, just married, John's arms wrapping around her as she collided into his chest, one night when he'd taken too long to get home, one hand in his hair, feeling the warm solid reality of him, the proof that he was safe, that her old world hadn't touched her world with him, that he was here. And his hands circling her back, "It's OK. Mary, it's OK", his voice a warm whisper in her ear.

His next words, almost shoved into her son's face, _"You're alive?!"_, his eyes threateningly bright, but his hands slow to leave Dean's shoulders, neither of them stepping back, even as her son's murmured reply is drowned by the angel's next words,half-barked, half-dragged out-"But what about the _bomb_ and the _darkness_ and-?"

And she can see herself, shouting up at John, but still pressed into the circle of his arms, his heart thundering reassuringly against hers-"Don't do that to me again. Don't ever let me, don't let me think that again", his arms tightening around her, his voice shushing in her ear, letting her breathe in the solid tangibility of his body, the warm, real proof of him being here, with her.

* * *

Dean's voice wavers slightly, laughter, half-disbelieving creeping into the words, his eyes moving between them. "An angel. The-a capital A. You know, wings, harp-"-and Mary had known his angel was going to roll his eyes before he did it, could almost have predicted the exasperated tilt of his head-

"No, I don't have a _harp."_

She could have predicted the slight twitch of her son's mouth, almost before his angel had spoken, the gleam of his eyes as he snatched up his angel's words, but his eyes softening, as though holding them with the gentlest touch.

Later, when she'll know Castiel, she'll always use his name, somehow, even when she hears her boys use the shortened version, Sam saying the word with a gentle, brotherly touch, sometimes a happy laugh in his voice, Dean saying it slower sometimes, as though he's holding it in his mouth, sometimes a breath, sometimes heavy and hurting so much Mary aches to put her arms around him, but she'll hold herself back, knowing it's not her arms her child now needs, sometimes touched with wonder that he gets to say it at all.

But when she knows him, when she looks at him sitting in the driver's seat of a car, and wonders if her son taught him how to do that, how many things he's learnt from Dean, how much stranger the way that love can mould your body to another person's, turning in synchronicity, moving in your own rhythm even as you walk, must seem to an angel, she'll say to him "They were never alone."

She'll see the confused tilt of a smile that she'll come to know, and know that he thinks she means her. She'll see the smile deepen as he looks away, and she'll know, in a way that makes her heart hurt with happiness, that he's thinking of her son, and of what this knowledge could do for him, of the certainty of that love sinking into her son's shoulders.

He's right, but he's wrong, as well. Mary could have meant both of them, as she could mean both of them in so many other situations, but she knows not to tell Castiel that yet, remembers those days of watching John work at his car, the peace it brought him as his arms strained and fought with the effort of moulding machinery to his will, those moments of thrill and home and something terrifying that would jump in her chest as his eyes caught hers' over the bonnet. That moment of John sliding a mixtape into her hands, eyebrow arched with that cocky grin he always made sure to wear when he was about to hand her something that made his heart shake. Looking away after their gazes held over a table, a straw from the same milkshake in each mouth, feelings tangling in her breast, wrestling with each other, making her feel too big and too small for her body at the same time, as though if she could just wrap her arms around John, nestle into his chest, she'd feel certain, the way one day she would, knowing she'd found her place.

She lets Castiel find his own way, and when she notices him pull a mixtape from his pocket, eyes roaming over the words he must know by heart, she lets him not be asked.

* * *

That moment, standing in the bunker, watching Dean and his angel's questions slide into each other, their gazes fixed on each other's faces, as though afraid to look away-the thought had settled suddenly, an answer to a question she hadn't known she was asking. _You know him by heart._

Later, when she'll be told how Castiel remade her son with his own hands, dragged him out of the depths of hell itself, it won't be a surprise, as it won't when he stands there, ready to face down all three of them to keep them alive, and it's her elder son his eyes move to when he says, the words dragged out of his throat, ragged and raw, _You mean too much to me._

But right then, she thinks _Angels watch over you_.

Maybe it's the sheer force of the otherness of this creature or the fierceness of his gaze, but she knows then that he _knows_ her son, this otherworldly being who's seen the start and end of the world, in ways she doesn't know Dean, couldn't have known him even if she'd been here all along. In ways even Sammy won't know him. Ways beneath the bone and the blood.

Later, Castiel will let slip some things to her. That there was a time when he could have read every one of Dean's thoughts if he had wished to, but never did. But that he saw some of them as he pulled Dean out piece by piece, used his hands to recreate him, branded his own mark into his skin without knowing he could. Snapshots of her son's life, snapshots he'd seen before, that all of Heaven had, as they'd watched the life of the man they'd decreed was foretold to help them, the man whom Castiel had been sent to save.

Out of all the angels that could have been chosen, it had been Castiel, and Mary knows, in the way that she'd known when he was about to wail as a baby or burrow his head into her shoulder or curl his chubby little fingers around hers', that her son thinks this sometimes.

* * *

She won't ask Castiel much about Heaven, and she'll try not to smile when Dean asks her not to in a rushed voice that sounds almost like a fumbled plea, the way his eyes dart over her shoulder for any sign of Castiel approaching, glancing over his shoulder as though expecting his angel to be standing behind him, but from the small fragments that will break through in conversations, one that she'll gently poke, hoping it doesn't graze a wound, is whether he saw any of her son's life before he was the one chosen to save him.

Castiel watches her for a second, his eyes caught, as though waiting to see if a trap has settled around him, but when Mary's quiet, he slowly volunteers, the words escaping one by one, that yes, there were always some things he could see.

Mary will nod, and then Castiel will say, haltingly, but with the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, that he saw glimpses of her in those brief moments of Dean's life, in those years before he and Dean ever met, and then Mary will smile, slowly holding the answer to the question that had risen in her chest ever since Dean first flung his arms around his angel's shoulders, the echo of those words she'd whispered to him each night, _Were you watching?_

* * *

"You watched him then" is all she will say, never having needed to hear the answer to be sure, and Castiel will look away, a blush creeping up his cheeks, but with that light in his eyes, that had blazed when he'd first caught the sound of her son's voice in the bunker, when they'd turned to each other at the exact same moment, that look of stunned, taut feeling caught between them.

* * *

She stands and watches her son smile as he turns to look at her-several lifetimes ago, she saw this smile, a dreamed ghost of it, when she let the stories of her sons' lives as she thought they'd be then roll out in front of her before she fell into dreams at night. Saw it, but nothing compared to how it is in front of her, that baby she saw then now the man before her, face cracking with something fiercer than joy, voice slightly rougher with pride, green eyes bright and shining with love.

("This is my wife, Mary" John had said, a hundred times, his arm carefully around her waist, her shoulders, hand resting on her pregnant stomach, that touch of awe never leaving the words, her body curving into his side, gold hair spilling against dark, filling each other's empty spaces, their eyes finding each other's gaze, silence enough.)

Dean beams at her, and Mary's heart beats with pride as he says, awe cracking his voice, joy seeming to wrestle with the words, "This is Castiel."

* * *

Mary will never know if it is the instinct that has pulled her towards the truths in her son's life since the moment he stirred inside her or the touch of otherness that comes with having been brought back from death, or just the sheer power of the way Castiel is looking at Dean, but she looks at them. Takes in the power, basks in the force of it for a moment, a power that could pull down the sky if it wanted to.

But when the world jolts between them, a jolt that Mary feels, viscerally, will feel many times as she watches them watch each other, the thing that steals her breath, that tautens the air, in Castiel's eyes as he looks at her son, each time will be not the power but the tenderness that moves with it.

She feels it moving, the oldest force in the world, and she thinks, maybe as a mother, or just a fellow creature, or as someone who has loved, _You have always watched him._

* * *

She stands in the nursery in another life, and watches her son, and feels that jolt, a silent sonic boom cracking under their feet, power and tenderness nothing compared to the awe of the sheer love that will in the same moment rip Heaven open with a wrench of its' hands and touch her son's head with the tenderest kiss.

A whisper in her son's ear, the breath of that otherness, soft brush of a wing. If she'd held her breath, she'd have felt it touch her son's skin.

_"Angels are watching over you."_

Joy fights in Dean's eyes, his body angled towards his angel, already waiting to turn back, to find that gaze.

* * *

"This is Castiel."

Her son's and his angel's eyes meet again, with those ghosts of smiles. Their silence is louder than the words.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess a sort of soundtrack to this fic is the amazing song cover linked in the Destiel vid at the start, so here's another link to it:https://freckledwings.tumblr.com/post/166184758207/the-road-so-far-cover-by-my-brother  
Neither the vid nor the song are mine, obviously.  
Leave a comment if you liked this little venture :)


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